Twitter tips: 4 ways to discover job leads for the job seeker

Twitter, on the face of it, is overwhelming. Especially to job seekers. How can you find job leads in 140 characters? Well, there are some good, workable strategies you can use to generate job leads using Twitter. Twitter won’t get you the job — but it can let you know a job is available.

Once you have a Twitter account, let’s take a look at what you can do to help search for jobs.

1. Build a list for your locality

Twitter is worldwide. Sure, it is fun to follow some famous person — but that doesn’t help you find a job. Instead, use Twitter to follow local people or people in your job search area. How do you do that? Most cities have a hash tag that you can use to post local information. For example, for my city of Madison, you can search for #Madison. The people using that tag are usually from Madison. Follow people who interest you who post to that hash tag to build a local list.

Local lists are great for three reasons. First, people on that list will often post job openings in the places they work because they know people want to know about job openings. Second, those groups also tend to get together via some club (for example, a Social Media Club) and that allows you to meet these people in person. That creates relationships; good for you all around. And, third, if a job opening does come up in a particular company, you may know of a person who works at that company that you discovered from your list and be able to talk to them about the company or even the job.

Don’t underestimate the power of building a local Twitter following. At worst, you find out cool social events to go to based on the Twitter stream.

2. Know the hash tags to follow

Twitter has some very specific hash tags to follow to help you find jobs and job information. For example, you can search on #job and that will lead you to specific jobs in cities as well as job search support links. A similar one is #jobsearch. The key is to search for hash tags that can help you find a job in your local area.

What’s a good way to start? Try a search on jobs in your local community. For me? Search for Jobs in Madison. That will give you a good choice of people to follow to know about jobs or to build a local list.

3. Follow targeted companies

There are a lot of companies on Twitter, promoting their presence on the web. You might have some very specific companies you’d like to work for and want to learn more about them — and the jobs they have available. A great place to do that is on Twitter. For example, the headquarters for American Family Insurance is located here in Madison. And, sure enough, they are on Twitter. Want to know about job openings there? Follow them on Twitter and watch the jobs roll by…

Now, you still need to find cool companies in your area, but once you do, you can easily search for the company name on Twitter (if it isn’t already on the company’s website…) and follow them and their job leads on Twitter.

4. Follow recruiters in your area

There are some tremendous recruiters on Twitter providing great job tips and helping their own recruitment of candidates by listing job openings they may have. Learning how to work with recruiters is easy information to find by following some of them.

The key for you, though, is finding the local recruiters who have the great relationships with local companies. Perhaps it is consulting firm. Perhaps it is recruiting out of a particular company. Local, of course, is better.

Effort produces leads

Before Twitter, producing job leads was strictly through people you knew. Now, however, you can expand your job leads through a little research and diligence using Twitter and the tools it provides for narrowing your view from the world of Twitter to your local area that can help you find a job.

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